Broken
by Pureauthor
Summary: /Oneshot/ /AU/ I once knew a boy named Franz...


Never Again

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Increased school workload, longer hours, stress from unsympathetic teachers, etc, etc. 

Me feeling especially moody equates to a angsty oneshot, since bleeding off this moodiness into my multi-chapter stories might end up altering the mood of them too much.

In any case, enjoy. AU oneshots, yum.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Setting: Immediately post-World War I, British countryside

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_Shall they return to beatings of great bells_

_In wild train-loads?_

_A few, a few, too few for drums and yells_

_May creep back, silent, to village wells,_

_Up half-known roads – The Send-Off, Wilfred Owen_

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I once knew a boy named Franz. 

He was a good lad, serious when the situation called for it, and intelligent in areas that mattered. He had a ready laugh, a quick smile, and the sort of personality that made it blindingly easy to be friends with him. He had a quiet optimism, a faith, if you will, in the decency of man.

Then he died. He died in the stinking hell of the trenches, in the wastelands of mud and sludge, as we battled against the Germans.

How and when, I can't say. If I was present at the time of his death, I didn't notice. All I know is that one day I went looking for him, and he just wasn't there anymore.

Damned if I know how he went out. Could've been anything.

And he wasn't the only one. How many men?

Captain Seth – Franz always did look up to him – he fought bravely. I hear he once took out a German machine gun emplacement all by his lonesome. He was a voice of sanity and reason in an increasingly insane world. Then, as we went over the top again for the umpteenth time, a stray bullet caught him in the chest. He didn't scream or shout. Just staggered back, slumped down, sighed, and died. We'd have buried the poor blighter, but then a shell landed right in front of his corpse. After that, we didn't have time to dig around for the pieces.

Come to think of it, Franz vanished around that time, too. Maybe the shock of seeing the closest thing he had to a mentor figure get vaporized was a bit too much. He vanished.

I step around the bend, my boots crunching on the ground. The air is chilly – I subconsciously pull my coat tighter around myself.

Forde was Franz's brother. He always was a reckless one, and we all joked that if any of us was going to be killed, he'd be the first to go. One day, he and some mates got himself stuck in a some dung hole for upwards of an hour while artillery rained down upon them. As luck would have it, he survived. Wouldn't say he made it, though. Post-traumatic stress disorder – shell shock for us lay people. He'd be normal for a while, then a noise – a dog's bark, a train's whistle, hells, even a bike horn – would set him off, trembling uncontrollably and staring blankly into nothingness. Wonder how missus Vanessa would adjust and cope.

The smell of a home-baked pie drifts through the window as I walk past. Rations have been tight – this family's apparently scraped together enough of the stuff for this occasion. A little tot's birthday, based on what I see.

Simple pleasures – the day I forget how to smile at such sights is the day I hurl myself off the tallest cliff I can find.

Still, the smile is quick to fade as I continue my walk. Too much death, too much despair. Crowds out the pleasanter moments, I don't doubt.

Take Innes. If ever a man was a born sniper, he was it. He once sniped out a machine gun installation and the three Boches surrounding it before any of 'em had the faintest idea what was going on.

Yes, he had skill, and he wasn't afraid to let us know. We usually were treated to displays of him hitting some sliver of gray that was a Kraut's arm or leg that he had assumed was well hidden in the trenches. Typically, he wouldn't boast. Just look satisfied with himself, put the rifle away, and move on.

Only problem was, he'd forgotten others knew how to snipe too.

I was knee deep in mud at that time, cursing up a storm as I tried vainly to struggle out of the thick sludge without sacrificing my shoddy boots in the process. Around me, the rain of shells and whine of bullets continued unceasingly. Then Innes' body flopped to the ground before me, a hole where his left eye had once been.

The memory of his remaining eye staring up into my face haunted my dreams for many a night after that.

"Aye, guv'!" The sound breaks my concentration. I glance up into the wizened face of a old man. I know him.

"Old man Mansel." I manage a smile. "How's that niece o' yours? She made it big in London, I hear."

"Aye, that she did." He looked me up and down with an appraising eye. "The war's over, eh? Sure took long enough."

"Yes. It took a long time." Though I cannot see it, I know by now that my face had gone blank. "Too long."

Ephraim was a corporal in the trenches with us. He came from the gentry, but he was never a prig or a snob with us. On the front, we were all equals, or as much as was possible. He was there for us lads, time and time again.

Once, on a march, with all of us bent double like beggars three times our age, shells began landing all around us, throwing up huge clods of earth and blasting us in any every direction. We panicked, and we've had run around like fools trying to avoid the blasts had not Ephraim found a path that led us half-underground, away from the worst of the blasts. I took a shrapnel wound to the leg, but lived to fight another day.

Then, one week before the armistice, we were in the thick of a fight with the opposing side. I was doing my best to make it out alive when I stepped his face by accident. Not that I supposed he would have worried about that – the bottom half of his body had been blown clean off. He had almost made it.

I glance up at the village. Everything seems so unfamiliar. The colours, the homes, the women going about their daily tasks… the ordinariness of it all causes tears to prickle at the back of my eyes.

I wonder how Colm is doing.

He'd never wanted to get caught up in the war, so he'd stayed home – he had a new wife to look to, after all. Then conscription came, and he was basically forced into it.

We met at the Somme, and I couldn't really deal with how flippant he was. Sure, we _all_ thought the officers back in their barracks were complete and utter assholes, but we actually attempted to be disciplined in their presence. Not Colm. He got barracks duty three times in a single week. If a toffee apple hadn't landed in the trench and gave him a blighty one just as he was about to go to sleep that night, he'd have become the single most targeted private on the Western Front.

Well, last I heard, he's safe back home with Neimi, so I guess he can't complain. He wanted no part in the fighting, anyway.

A cough distracts me from my musings. Then another, more violent fit. When it ends, I shake my head, pausing and leaning slightly against the bark of an old tree for support.

Chlorine gas. Entered a wave of it as we were crossing a river. Not enough to kill me, but I still get chest pains on cold nights. I just know it's going to give me hell when I grow older. And just when the war was about to come to a close, too.

If I had to rate it, I'd say being stuck in the company hospital knowing the war was over and that others were going to home to their sweethearts and families was torture right up there with being shelled continuously as we sought shelter in the muddy earth.

Can't say I got the worst of it, though. Kyle was caught unawares. We found him writhing on the ground, gasping for breath and coughing up ever increasing amounts of blood. There was nothing we could do except dump him onto a cart and send the body home.

That's war, isn't it? Affects the survivors as thoroughly as those who didn't make it. No winners, only loss. Loss of life. Loss of dreams. Loss of hope.

My tired eyes stare at the nearing cottage. My feet drag with an aching weariness, and I let loose a sigh.

Then I hear the voice. The voice I'd dreamed off countless nights in the barracks and trenches. It washes over me like a cool spring, refreshing and invigorating.

"Franz!"

"Amelia." It's all I can manage before she tackles me, arms wrapped tight around my body.

"You're safe!" She sniffles slightly. "I was so worried… Your last letter came nearly two months ago."

"It did?" I allow myself a wry smile as I embrace her in return. "I wrote you every week. Blasted Post must have messed it all up."

"That doesn't matter now." She pulls away enough to look me in the face. "You're back. You're home. That's all that matters."

I don't want to leave her embrace. I want to feel the warmth of her body pressing against mine. So I pull her closer once again, resting my chin on her shoulder as I ponder what she has just said.

"_You're back."_

"Am I?" I say, so softly only I can hear. "Am I really?"

Amelia didn't know. She thinks the Franz she bid farewell to all those years ago was the same one who had returned.

Franz hadn't survived. He'd died a long time ago, in the hell of trenches and gas and mud and explosions and war and death. He could no longer come back.

Could he?

My eyes drift to Amelia's golden blonde hair, clipped so that it would reach her shoulders. I inhale in the scent of roses that always seems to be around her. And I remember. I remember the times before the war. Countryside walks. Dinner- table laughter. Quiet talks by the fireside.

Faint embers glow in the ashes.

I look up into the sky, the pale gray expanse stretching out before me. "Yes." I whisper. "I'm back. I'm home."

Then I close my eyes and bow my head. My embrace around her tightens, my arms trembling slightly.

Never again.

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Thank you for reading. Please review. 


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